Broke George Lucas Sells Off 'Star Wars' Stage Musical

On the same day a Vanity Fair writer delivered the definitive history of the worst Star Wars spinoff ever, another report suggests that infamous show may soon have competition.

E! notes today that George Lucas has sold his blessing to Star Wars: A Musical Journey, which will premiere next year in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra providing accompaniment to series excerpts screened in chronological order — from The Phantom Menace to Return of the Jedi. The bad news: No Clone Wars, and thus no showstopping Ziro the Hutt number. The good news: Reports also cite the inclusion of "a Stormtrooper kick line and singing Wookiees [accompanying] John Williams' Oscar-winning score."

While that may not sound good (or even legitimate), we must keep hope alive that Journey may yet provide a new generation with a conflagration similar to the Star Wars Holiday Special — that infamous 1978 spectacle so exhaustively explored today by VF's Frank DiGiacomo:

[When Bruce] Vilanch heard Lucas’s storyline at a development meeting at Smith and Hemion’s L.A. offices, he quickly realized that a “big challenge” lay ahead. Lucas was intent on building The Star Wars Holiday Special, as it would be called, around Wookiees — specifically, the family of Chewbacca, Han Solo’s shaggy sidekick, as they outwitted Imperial forces to come together on Life Day, the Wookiee equivalent of Christmas. Suddenly, Vilanch says, the special was in danger of looking like “one long episode of Lassie.”

“I said: ‘You’ve chosen to build a story around these characters who don’t speak. The only sound they make is like fat people having an orgasm,’” the 250-plus-pound Vilanch recalls. “In fact, I told Lucas he could just leave a tape recorder in my bedroom and I’d be happy to do all the looping and Foley work for him.”